Dehydrogenation processes can generally be described as either oxidative or non-oxidative. Oxidative dehydrogenation suffers from the disadvantage of being a highly exothermic reaction. There is also the potential risk of obtaining explosive mixtures of the hydrocarbon feedstock and the di-oxygen containing feed. Operating such a process with a large excess of one of the feed streams does not exclude the possibility of explosive mixtures in local environments.
DE patent application no. 10018724 discloses an oxidative dehydrogenation process using mesoporous materials of the M41S type.
Non-oxidative processes where direct dehydrogenation takes place often suffer from the requirements of frequent catalyst regeneration and associated low carbon yields with respect to the desired olefin-containing products.
Olefins are important raw materials for a wide range of major petrochemical processes. Olefins can be supplied by thermal cracking processes. However, production of olefins by selective dehydrogenation of the corresponding alkanes are often used to meet local demands and/or raw material characteristics.
The invention provides a non-oxidative process whereby the above disadvantages of conventional oxidative and non-oxidative processes are avoided. High yields of olefin-containing products are obtained.